PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – U.S. troops protected aid handouts and the United Nations sought extra peacekeepers to bolster security in earthquake-shattered Haiti yesterday Monday as marauding looters emptied wrecked shops and tens of thousands of survivors waited desperately for food and medical care.

Hundreds of scavengers and looters swarmed over damaged stores in Port-au-Prince, seizing goods and fighting among themselves, but some signs of normality returned as street vendors emerged with fruit and vegetables for sale.

A girl reaches for goods thrown by looters from a destroyed store in Port-au-Prince.

“We do not have the capacity to fix this situation. Haiti needs help … the Americans are welcome here. But where are they? We need them here on the street with us,” said policeman Dorsainvil Robenson, deployed to chase looters in the capital.

Crowds gathered to plead for food, water and jobs outside installations being used by the United Nations, U.S. military and international relief agencies. Jordanian peacekeepers kicked Haitians and fired in the air at a crowd clamoring outside Port-au-Prince airport, witnesses said.

Some 2,200 Marines with heavy earth-moving equipment, medical aid and helicopters were arriving on Monday, said the U.S. Southern Command, which aims to have 10,000 troops in the area for the rescue operation.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he had recommended to the Security Council that 1,500 police and 2,000 troops be added to the 9,000-member U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

World leaders have promised massive amounts of assistance to rebuild Haiti since Tuesday’s quake killed as many as 200,000 people and left Port-au-Prince, in ruins.

Haitian President Rene Preval appealed to donors to focus not just on immediate aid for Haitians but also on long-term development of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

“We cannot just cure the wounds of the earthquake. We must develop the economy, agriculture, education, health and reinforce democratic institutions,” he said at a conference of donors in neighboring Dominican Republic.

DONORS MEET
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, hosting the meeting, proposed the creation of a $2 billion-a-year fund to finance Haiti’s recovery over five years.

European Union institutions and member states have offered more than 400 million euros ($575.6 million) in emergency and longer-term assistance to Haiti.

Canada will host a meeting of foreign ministers in Montreal on January 25 to look at Haiti’s needs.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, meanwhile, proposed that African nations offer Haitians the chance to resettle in “the land of their ancestors”.

“Africa should offer Haitians the chance to return home. It is their right,” Wade said on his website. Local media quoted Senegalese officials as saying the West African country was ready to offer parcels of fertile land to Haitians.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, pitched straight into the aid effort by unloading bottles of water from a plane after landing in Port-au-Prince, witnesses said.

SECURITY CRITICAL
Aid workers struggled to get food and medical help to injured and hungry survivors, many living in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and decomposing bodies.

“The situation is very tough on the ground, including for agencies and countries rushing to help. Minimal survival even for staff there is an issue,” the head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, said in Geneva.

Nearly a week into the crisis, international aid was only just starting to get through to those in need, delayed by logistical logjams and security concerns.

Preval said U.S. troops will help U.N. peacekeepers keep order on Haiti’s increasingly lawless streets, where overstretched police and U.N. peacekeepers have been unable to provide full security.

Haiti’s weak government was crippled by the quake that damaged the presidential palace and state buildings, forcing cabinet ministers to meet outdoors on plastic chairs.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” the commander of the U.S. military operation in Haiti, Lieutenant General Ken Keen said: “We are here principally for a humanitarian assistance operation, but security is a critical component. … We are going to have to address the situation, the security.”

In an indication of the sensitivity of U.S. soldiers operating in a Caribbean state where they have intervened in the past, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused Washington of “occupying Haiti undercover.”

POLICE PURSUE LOOTERS
Streets piled with debris slowed the delivery of medical and food supplies, but there were signs of progress as international medical teams took over damaged hospita
ls where seriously injured people had lain untreated for days.

Rescue teams raced against time to find people alive under the rubble of collapsed buildings, with more successful rescues of survivors reported six days after the disaster.

Trucks piled with corpses were ferrying bodies to hurriedly excavated mass graves outside the city, but tens of thousands of victims are still believed buried under the rubble.

With people becoming more desperate by the day, looters swarmed smashed shops in downtown Port-au-Prince, fighting each other with knives, hammers, ice-picks and rocks while police tried to disperse them with gunfire. At least two suspected looters were shot dead on Sunday, witnesses said.

Heavily armed gang members have returned to the Cite Soleil shantytown since breaking out of prison after the quake.

“Whether things explode is all down to whether help gets through from the international community,” said police commander Ralph Jean-Brice, in charge of Haiti’s West Department, whose force is down by half due to the quake.

Local mayors, businessmen and bankers told Preval that restoring law and order was essential for reviving at least some commercial activity.

FOOD FROM THE AIR
The U.S. military said it was doing its best to get as many planes as possible into Port-au-Prince, after aid agencies complained shipments of aid had not been allowed to land at the U.S.-controlled airport.

More than 30 countries have rushed rescue teams, doctors, field hospitals, food, medicine and other supplies to Haiti, choking the one-runway airfield whose control tower was knocked out by the quake.

U.S. military officers hope to reopen Port-au-Prince’s shattered seaport in two or three days, but are relying for now on airdrops to distribute food rations and water by helicopter.

The Pentagon said it had distributed 130,000 rations and 70,000 bottles of water by Sunday evening. Desperate Haitians jostled to grab the packets thrown from helicopters that swooped down over camp sites.

Fuel prices have doubled, and there were massive queues outside gas stations, where cars, motorbikes and people with jerrycans have lined up. Haitian police stand guard at some.

Although a few street markets began selling vegetables, charcoal, chicken and pork, tens of thousands of survivors across the city were still clamoring for help.

“We haven’t moved for four days, only God knows how long we can survive like this, but there are no jobs and no houses,” said Marie Gracieuse Baptiste, a single mother with four children, sheltering at one improvised camp.
A crude sign at the camp read: “People needs water, food.”